Bachmann fizzles in debate

Asked about her inflammatory claims about the HPV vaccine, the Minnesota congresswoman batted away the accusation she’d been irresponsibly alarmist, then proceeded to repeat her criticism of Rick Perry’s attempt to mandate the inoculation.

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Perry fired back, saying he’d “erred on the side of life.” The whole exchange took less than two and a half minutes. And with that, what might have been Bachmann’s last chance to put herself back in the spotlight of the 2012 primary race had passed.

Bachmann barely merited a mention in the post-debate analysis, from a post-debate focus group on Fox News to the ever-roiling debate-about-the-debate on Twitter. At one point mid-debate, conservative pundit Michelle Malkin tweeted, “Is Michele Bachmann still there?”

The onetime victor of the Ames straw poll was scarcely more of a factor than Rick Santorum, Herman Cain or even Gary Johnson, the former New Mexico governor new to the debate stage.

The brief altercation over vaccines was the only time, during any of her eight responses, that Bachmann mentioned another candidate by name. Even on the attack, she played it safe, repeating what she’d said before: that she was just repeating something she’d been told, not making any claims about the safety of vaccines; that Perry’s attempt to mandate the vaccine was a government intrusion on parental rights; and that he’d attempted to inappropriately benefit a campaign contributor.

If anything, Bachmann’s language was tempered and restrained compared with last week’s debate, when she blasted Perry for “innocent little 12-year-old girls forced to have a government injection.” This time, it was simply that “12-year-old little girls … had to have a shot.”

Last week’s debate was widely seen as a do-or-die moment for Bachmann, whose poll numbers have plummeted as Perry has seemed to steal her conservative thunder.

She made the most of it then with her tough jabs at Perry, but saw the HPV issue backfire thanks to the reckless post-debate comments suggesting the Gardasil vaccine — widely deemed safe by medical authorities, and damning enough for Perry as an issue of government-overreach and cronyism — might cause mental retardation.

If last week was high-stakes for Bachmann, Thursday night’s stakes were even higher, and the consequences for her uninspiring performance could be dire for her flailing candidacy.

Bachmann’s post-debate interview Thursday night with Fox’s Sean Hannity offered a glimpse of what might have been. She called out Perry for his claim that he’d been inspired to mandate the vaccine by meeting a cancer-stricken 31-year-old, noting that he didn’t actually meet the woman until after he issued his order. “So he gave another false statement this evening, and I think that’s going to hurt the governor,” she said.

It was Hannity who drew a parallel between the pay-to-play of which Bachmann had accused Perry and the brewing scandal involving the Obama administration and the solar company Solyndra. Bachmann ran with the idea, and showed she had more Perry oppo in her arsenal: “Well, this isn’t the only instance where the governor has done that,” she said, noting that Perry had received “$17 million in campaign contributions … from people he has appointed to boards and commissions in the state of Texas.”

Listing more examples of Perry administration favors for Perry donors, she said, “There’s instance after instance. This isn’t just one isolated situation.”

It was a line that would have served her well during the debate, advancing a step further the argument that Perry represents the corrupt establishment. But during the debate, Bachmann didn’t make it.